1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for performing communication based on a frame structure in a wireless mesh network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional frame structure used in a wireless mesh network is designed based on time division multiplexing access (TDMA)-based transmission, and does not consider mobility of mesh nodes.
For high speed transmission, a broadband-based frame structure is designed based on an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme.
An OFDM-based transmission is inappropriate for an environment having a wide coverage since power is limited. The OFDM-based transmission may not provide a sufficient opportunity of transmission for a distributed access control-based medium access control (MAC) protocol, and may reduce a spatial reuse factor.
Information associated with a node adjacent to each of the mesh nodes changes relatively fast, since the mesh nodes move. Therefore, when a mesh node does not obtain a transmission opportunity sufficiently fast, performance of a total system may be deteriorated.
A scheduling process in which a mesh node obtains a resource may also be robust against mobility, and may be required to satisfy a delay.
Therefore, there is a desire for an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) transmission-based frame structure that overcomes the drawback of the wide coverage. The frame structure may increase an opportunity of transmitting a broadcast message and a scheduling message for obtaining a resource. Accordingly, the frame structure may be robust against the mobility, and may also enable high speed data transmission.